Picton.

Stunning scenery, calm weather and blue skies. That is what greeted us this morning when at 6am we picked up Captain John Henderson, our Queen Charlotte Sound pilot. We berthed in Picton harbour at breakfast time whilst across from us the Interislander ferries loaded their wares for Wellington from whence we came.

It was a peaceful crossing of the Cook Strait last night despite my concerns that a large swell from the south may spoil the serenity.

Most of the morning was given over to our crew emergency drill. Today we had a make believe fire in one of our main electricity generating rooms followed by the inflation of one of our training liferafts. The photo album contains a few more photos of the exercise. Click here to view it.

The crew assemble ashore for a liferaft inflation demonstration.

By the time we had conducted our drill and carried out the debrief afterwards the morning had simply vanished. The purpose of the debrief is to learn lessons from the exercise and find areas where we can improve our response.

We sailed shortly after 18:00 and left Queen Charlotte Sound through the Tory Channel. I will leave you with a few photos of the passage out.